A4_PHEN-MIND_n7

Lynne Rudder Baker
Cartesianism and the First-Person Perspective
she can do things intentionally; at the robust stage, she can conceive of herself as doing things. At
the rudimentary stage, she can perceive things in the world; at the robust stage, she can conceive
of herself as perceiving things. Although the robust stage of the first-person perspective requires
language, it is exhibited throughout one’s life in characteristically human activities – from making
contracts to celebrating anniversaries to seeking fame by entering beauty contests.
So, a person with a robust first-person perspective can manifest her personhood in a much richer
and more variegated way than can an infant who has only a rudimentary first-person perspective.
What makes you now – with your robust first-person perspective – the same person that you were
when you were an infant – with only a rudimentary first-person perspective – is that there is a single
exemplification of the dispositional property of having a first-person perspective both then and now
– regardless of the vast differences in its manifestations over the years. For example, an infant may
manifest a first-person perspective (at the rudimentary stage) by drawing back from a looming figure,
and an adult may manifest a first-person perspective (at the robust stage) by making a will. A human
person from infancy through maturity until death (and perhaps beyond) is a single exemplifier of a
first-person perspective – whether rudimentary or robust. Now in greater detail.
Let us start with the rudimentary first-person perspective. The stage of the rudimentary first-person
perspective is shared by human and nonhuman animals; the rudimentary first-person perspective
connects animals that constitute persons with other animals. A human infant is a person constituted
by a human animal. An infant is born with minimal consciousness and intentionality, which are the
ingredients of a rudimentary first-person perspective. A person comes into existence when a human
organism develops to the point of being able to support a rudimentary first-person perspective. The
person constituted by the organism – the new entity in the world – has a first-person perspective
essentially.
The rudimentary first-person perspective does not depend on linguistic or conceptual abilities. The
rudimentary first-person perspective is found in many biological species, perhaps all mammals, and
seems to be subject to gradation or degrees. Among species, consciousness and intentionality seem
to dawn gradually (from simpler organisms) and the rudimentary first-person perspective seems to
become more fine-grained as it runs through many species in the animal kingdom.
Darwinism offers a great unifying thesis that “there is one grand pattern of similarity linking all life”
(Eldredge, 2000, p. 31). Considered in terms of genetic or morphological properties or of biological
functioning, there is no discontinuity between chimpanzees and human animals. In fact, human
animals are biologically more closely related to certain kinds of chimpanzees than the chimpanzees
are related to gorillas and orangutans 1 .
Human infants, along with dogs, cows, horses and other non-language-using mammals, also have
rudimentary first-person perspectives. So, my view recognizes the continuity between human
animals that constitute human infants and higher nonhuman animals that constitute nothing. In
this way, the biological continuity of the animal kingdom is unbroken.
But wait! If that is so, then why do I say that a person is only constituted by an animal and not
identical to an animal For this reason: Although there is no discontinuity in the animal world –
no biological discontinuity – the evolution of human persons (perhaps by natural selection) does
introduce an ontological discontinuity.
The ontological discontinuity between persons and animals lies in the fact that a human infant – who
is not identical to the organism that constitutes her – has a remote capacity to develop a robust firstperson
perspective. A nonhuman organism that does not constitute a person may have a rudimentary
first-person perspective (as chimpanzees do), but it has no remote capacity to develop a robust first-
1 Dennett, D.C. (1995), Darwin’s Dangerous idea, Simon and Schuster, New York, p. 336. Dennett is discussing Jared Diamond’s The
Third Chimpanzee.
2.
The
Rudimentary
First-Person
Perspective
3.
The Robust
First-Person
Perspective
person perspective. And this remote capacity distinguishes persons from all other beings.
A remote capacity is a second-order capacity to develop a capacity 2 . For example, a healthy human
infant has a remote capacity to ride a bicycle. She does not yet have the capacity to ride, but she does
have the capacity to acquire the capacity to ride a bike. When the young child learns to ride a bicycle,
she then acquires an in-hand capacity to ride a bicycle; that is, in certain circumstances (when she has
a bicycle available and wants to ride), she actually rides a bicycle and manifests her capacity to ride
a bicycle. She may never learn to ride a bike, in which case her remote capacity to ride a bike would
not issue in an in-hand capacity to ride a bike. Similarly, even though a remote capacity to develop
a robust first-person perspective is an essential property of persons, a person may never actually
develop a robust first-person perspective (if, for example, the person had a case of severe autism).
The point is that an infant person has not only a rudimentary first-person perspective, but also has a
remote capacity to develop a robust perspective; otherwise the entity would not be a human person.
So, the ontological difference between persons and animals lies in the robust first-person perspective
and in the remote capacity to develop one. In pre-linguistic persons (like babies), the rudimentary
stage of the first-person perspective brings with it the remote capacity to develop a robust firstperson
perspective. Nonhuman animals have no such remote capacity.
So: What makes persons unique is that only persons have robust first-person perspectives. (If dogs
learned to talk and acquired the capacity to conceive of themselves in the first-person, a new kind of
entity would come into existence, canine-persons. But the point would still hold: only persons have
robust first-person perspectives).
To sum up: The rudimentary stage of a first-person perspective is a nonconceptual stage that entails
consciousness and intentionality. The rudimentary stage is what ties us persons to the seamless
animal kingdom; the robust stage is what makes us ontologically and morally unique. Now let us turn
to what, exactly, a robust first-person perspective is.
Unlike the rudimentary stage, which does not require language or concepts, the robust stage of the
first-person perspective is a conceptual stage that entails the peculiar ability to conceive of oneself as
oneself in the first-person. Conclusive evidence of a robust first-person perspective comes from use of
complex first-person sentences like e.g., “I wonder how I will die,” or “I promise that I will stay with
you” 3 . If I wonder how I will die, or I promise that I will stay with you, then I am thinking of myself
as myself; I am not thinking of myself in any third-person way (e.g., not as Lynne Baker, nor as that
woman, nor as the only person standing in the room) at all. Even if I had amnesia and did not realize
that I was Lynne Baker, I could still wonder how I am going to die. Any entity that can wonder how
she – she herself – will die ipso facto has a robust first-person perspective and thus is a person. She can
understand herself from “within”, so to speak.
In order to have a robust first-person perspective, one must have a concept of oneself as oneself from
the first-person – a self-concept. The second occurrence of ‘I’ in “I wonder how I am going to die”
expresses a self-concept. It is impossible that two people have the same self-concept (cf. Kripke, 2011,
p. 298). A self-concept cannot stand alone; it is a nonqualitative concept that is used only in tandem
with other concepts 4 . If I promise that I will take care of you, then I manifest a robust first-person
perspective by expressing a self-concept; but also I manifest mastery of empirical concepts like
“promise” and “taking care”. And it is in learning a natural language that one masters these other
common empirical concepts that one joins to a self-concept. (Hume was right that when I look inside
2 I found the handy distinction between remote and in-hand capacity in (Pasnau, 2002, p. 115).
3 Hector-Neri Castañeda developed this idea in several papers. See “He: A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness”, Ratio, 8
(1966), pp. 130-157, and “Indicators and Quasi-Indicators”, American Philosophical Quarterly, 4 (1967), pp. 85-100.
4 I think that this point suggests that Hume’s famous passage, “When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always
stumble upon some particular impression” (Treatise, Book I, Part IV, Section VI, 253) does not imply that a self-concept has no
extension, only that a self-concept can be deployed only with other concepts.
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